Avoiding Buyer’s Remorse - Smart Shopping on AppSumo

If you've ever heard of the software called Zapier, it started on a website called AppSumo. And today, I'm gonna give you some tips on how you can find ridiculously low prices for some great software and avoid any mistakes. Welcome to your podcast website, the ultimate guide for podcasters looking to level up their online presence. Whether you're a seasoned podcaster or just starting out, this show is your go to resource for mastering the art of building

and optimizing your podcast website. From website basics to advanced SEO strategies, we cover it all. No tech jargon. No confusion. Just practical tips and actionable advice you can implement right away. Here is your host, Dave Jackson. Yeah. Believe it or not, Zapier now if you've never heard of Zapier, it is a tool that you basically say, if this happens, then do this. And you can basically

tie a bunch of software together. So for example, when someone signs up at the School of Podcasting, it will then automatically add them as a premium member in Captivate, all that kind of stuff. If this happens, then do this. And Zapier started on AppSumo. So what the heck is AppSumo?

AppSumo is a website slash service where they find up and coming companies that have software, and they broker deals to where you can get well, I'll give you an example. I just bought one. It's a keyword tool called WriterZen. And this was on AppSumo a couple years ago, and I remember when they went off the site. So that's the one thing. There's a bit of a scarcity thing going on where if you don't get it now, you might not get it. But, Writer's Den is

something that came on, and everybody's like, oh my gosh. It's back. This is amazing. And it's $79 once. You get a lifetime deal. Now all the cool kids call that an LTD because, you know, in America, we can't handle 3 words. We have to abbreviate it. And so what I wanted to do was just explain some tips because this is a great website. I've never really been burned by any, you know, website or a software that went out of business or they ended up not honoring their deal because AppSumo is really

they they make sure that everyone is happy. And I'll give you an example. I bought a software once, and it it wasn't really anybody's fault. But I thought the software did one thing, and it turns out it was really designed to do something else. And I went in, and they have a refund policy. And so I was like, you know, a refund policy is only as good as it's honored. And, for example, I just bought this rider's den. I haven't really used it yet, so maybe I'll review it later. But it

has a 60 day money back guarantee. And I actually went in once, and I had used the software for maybe a day. And I could just tell immediately, this is not what I thought it was. And I was able to refund it. Now how can you end

up avoiding that situation? Well, there are a couple of things you can do. When you go to the website and you see the product, you can go down and basically see a couple different things. One is questions. And so you'll see where, actual AppSumo people have asked questions. And so this shows you how attentive the company is to answering questions. And so you have to remember that in some cases, this company might be 3 people in a basement. And so if you don't see a lot of answers, then don't

go crazy. Like, oh, I can't believe they did this, because they might be actually answering their actual customers. And so I see here they've answered most of the questions here. There was one that I was like, oh. And they said, here's one. For those questions that require a closer look, please email our support team. And then there was another one where they said, yeah. Our support team has already answered these questions via email. And I was like, well, wait. Like, what was the

answer? Let us all learn together. Now in addition to questions, and, really, I think my favorite place is underneath the name of whatever you're looking at, they'll show you where the owner of AppSumo apparently really loves tacos. And so where Amazon has their 5 star reviews, on AppSumo, you have 5 taco reviews. And in this case, the thing I actually bought was called Writer's Den, and it has 4 and a

half tacos. And when you click on that, I can see there are 249 reviews, and you can sort them by newest to oldest by ranking. So if I look at the lowest rating here, somebody says, hey. It's kind of like another writing tool in a sea of so many, and they're just not that difference. Well, okay. But if I go back to the newest one, it says this is a very useful tool for SEO research and content optimization, which is really their bread and butter. So this is yet another company.

This they've added some sort of AI writing tool. I love in the, the one video they actually show you. You can write original content, and then AI writes it. And I'm like, is that really original content when AI writes it? The other thing I did is I went to LinkedIn, and I saw that the actual company has been around a few years. I can see where they were on AppSumo. And so they had a lot of positive reviews

on that. And then I went to their website, and I noticed this is where you wanna check out their support area because there's nothing worse than I remember when companies used to do this. I don't think they do this too often now, but they used to have forums. And you'd go into the forum, and you could see where somebody asked a question 6 months ago and never got an answer. So I don't see many people doing this, but I did wanna see their support. And especially

with software, I want videos. Somebody to walk me through. And what's cool in this case with writer's end, they actually have a button at the bottom of their screen that says academy. So if you wanna learn SEO, they've got a free course. You don't even have to give them your email. They have, a brand monitoring on search engine, kind of. They have a bunch of, you know, tutorials

here, and they're up to date. They look good. They are in English, which is great for me because that's the language I speak. And so that's another thing you wanna look at. So first of all, check the questions to see how attentive they are, keeping in mind that many times these companies have a very small staff, then check the reviews because these are from people that actually

purchased the product. And you can see and and they're very good. This is a little bit like YouTube where people are very open about why they don't like a software or what they wish it did and things of that nature. Then research the company, and this takes all of, you know, 5 minutes to go over to LinkedIn, see when it was open, or or check the about page on their website, and then check their

support. And that will usually give you a good idea of what's going on with the software, what's going on with the company. And, again, you have this insane refund time. So if you buy a piece of software and you don't like it, you can often return it. I've done that twice. And no hassle. You get your money back. So those are some tips, and I just wanna give you

kind of a disclaimer here. AppSumo is very addicting. It really is. I have bought many different products over the years, and many of them I still use. I can think of a couple that I go, oh, wow. I remember when I bought that. Yeah. I never used it. But I there is a program called their plugins program that I think is a $100 a year, and you get 10% off. Well, like, in this case, I just bought this particular tool for writing, and it was $79 for life for

life. And I saved $8. So if you buy, you know, one piece of software a month, then you're gonna make up your money pretty quick. And so that's just something I want to let you know before you go ahead and over there. It can be an addicting place to be. I I have the same problem with Facebook Marketplace. When I was young, I'm a musician. I was 20. I had money in my pocket and no bills. And if I walked

into a music store, I often walked out with things that maybe I didn't want. But as I was doing this today, I'm like, you know what? I should talk about this on the podcast just to make you aware of it and also help you choose things that really fit your needs. I'll have links out in the show notes, or they do have an affiliate program, which is kinda cool. If you go to your podcast website, And AppSumo is appsum0, and I'll put a link to these in our resource section as well.

Your podcast website is part of the Power of Podcasting Network. Find this show and all of Dave's other projects at power of podcasting.com.